Nextdoor Source: https://nextdoor.com/p/-PsyGY3X_CNs?utm_source=share&extras=MjExNjg4Nzk%3D&utm_campaign=1703360014279
Written By Frank Winstead
The Franklin Times [12-21-2023] buried some important Board of Education election info on page 3A. Due to a change in state law (May 2023), voters will decide the Nonpartisan Board of Education winners in the November General Election instead in the March [Partisan] Primary Election. Underappreciated Franklin Times reporter Carey Johnson seems to have a scoop on this. I see the following effects of this change:
More voters will actually have a say in picking the winner because more people vote in the General Election than in the Primary Election.
Most voters in Franklin County are registered Unaffiliated. They don’t have much motivation to vote in nonpartisan races held during a partisan primary. So, now the bulk of the County’s voters will actually be presented with an opportunity to have a say.
The public will have a greater awareness of the Board of Education[BoE]. The BoE has a budget bigger than the county budget due to funding from county, state and federal sources. The government school system is also the biggest employer in the county. — This change was news to me and I follow this kind of stuff. So I did some research which took a surprising degree of effort. If anybody wants to know what I found out about how this change occurred in obscurity, then leave a comment or message me. ——-
Franklin Times article: https://www.thefranklintimes.com/photos/ft122123.pdf
NC Board of Elections: https://www.ncsbe.gov/
NC State Legislature “Session Laws”: https://www.ncleg.gov/Laws/SessionLaws
I added red highlights to the session law text. The strikethroughs and underlines are from the original pdf on the state legislatures website: https://www.ncleg.gov/enactedlegislation/sessionlaws/pdf/2023-2024/sl2023-17.pdf
